"Mayor can’t stay in Parliament all the time." He spoke with care. "Someone like the Mayor, though, can’t just go walking, or riding. Has to have protection, yes? Has to trust them. Wherever they go-Jack told me this, Jack watched for this-wherever they go, Mayor’s Clypean Guard take over. They’re the only ones trusted." He looked up. His face was not impish or playful. "Imagine if one of them were turned. Imagine if one could be bought."

"But they’re chosen just so’s they can’t be bought…"

"History…" Jacobs spoke with terse authority. Brought Ori to a hush. "Is all full. And dripping. With the corpses. Of them who trusted the incorruptible. "

He gave Ori a name. Ori stared while the old tramp walked away. He hobbled into view in each puddled streetlight until he reached the end of the alley and leaned, a tired old man with chalk on his fingers.

"Where do you go?" Ori said. His voice was flat by the river, did not echo between brick walls and windows but spread out and was quickly gone. "And dammit, Spiral, how d’you know these things? Come to Toro," he said. He was excited and unnerved. "How do you do this? You’re better than any of us, come to the fucking Bull, come join us. Won’t you?"

The old man licked his lips and hovered. Would he speak? Ori saw him deciding.

"Not all Jack’s paths is dried up," he said. "There’s ways of knowing. Ways of hearing things. I know." Tapped his nose, comedically conspiratorial. "I know things, ain’t it? But I’m too old to be a player now, boy. Leave that to the young and angry."

He repeated the name. He smiled again and walked away. And Ori knew he should go after him, should try again to bring him into the orbit of Toro. But there was a very strong and strange respect in him, something close to awe. Ori had taken to wearing marks on his clothes, coils mimicking the spirals Jacobs left on walls. Spiral Jacobs came and went in his strange ways, and Ori could not deny him his exits.

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

Old Shoulder was delighted with Ori’s information, the name, but cheerfully disbelieved his claims to its provenance.

"Drinking in the right pubs in Sheck my green arse, boy," he said. "This is insider stuff. You ain’t telling. You’ve a contact you’re guarding. You hoarding him? Her? Some officer’s tart? You been doing some horizontal recruitment, Ori? Whatever. I don’t know what you’re doing but this is… this is gold. If it’s true. So I ain’t going to push it."